Wednesday, October 11, 2006

We're here!



This is the view of the light house from my parent's apartment. It's the oldest working light house in the world. We'll get a closer look at it tomorrow. The weather is beautiful right now, I hear it's freezing in Denver, so sorry, ok, not really.

What a plane ride...from door to door it was 29 hours (planes and layovers). The shuttle picked us up at 530am on Monday and the Cab dropped us off at 6:30 pm the next evening (minus the 8 hour difference). The boys did great. Jake had a hard time sleeping on the plane from Phili to Madrid, but ended up taking a two hour nap in the airport (of our 7 hour layover).
Our first dinner was at this little place where they only serve the same hot meal every day; they do serve some ham and cheese but other than that the menu never changes and apparently it's really popular. It's pig stomach and garbanzo bean stew, you can get the garbanzo beans with out the pig stomach (can we hear an Amen?). They were really tasty, Jason, brave soul, ate the 'meat' too. We had a great bottle of country wine and some ham and cheese too. The country wine is served in ceramic caraffes and ceramic mugs and it's very sweet.
We slept for about 12 hours and ventured out of a some pasteries and 'cafe con leche' (coffee and milk). Jason had a tortilla, here a tortilla is an omlette, not what we think of as a tortilla in the Western U.S. We went to my mom's favorite bar, which is also a coffee house and little pastery shop. It's called Lord Byron, although the owners have no affinity for the Brits or Byron's poems, She has no idea why they called it Lord Byron, hmmm. She goes there for breakfast every day with her little 'old lady' friends. All of whom pinched the boys' cheeks and exclaimed how 'guapo' (handsome) they are. Now we're back at the apartment, we plan on going to the 'old' section of town later tonight. The kids are napping and we're still taking it easy on our fist day here. Oh my brother made it to Spain from Iraq safely, he and his new wife are taking some time in Madrid before they come here. She'll be meeting my mom for the first time. The boys can't wait to see both of them, although they were disappointed that Gina was not going to bring her dog, Daphne, with her.

1 comment:

Martha said...

When your husband is a fan of Three Amigos, yep, I know who El Guapo is...his buddy, the Handsome one! :) Dom's knickname is Jefe (the chief). That's about all the Spanish I know!

Glad to hear your travels are off to a great start! And, no, it isn't THAT cold here (60s) No snow: just over eager weather men HOPING for that big storm.